Can an employee on maternity leave be dismissed if a fixed term contract expires in the middle of maternity leave?

Posted in : First Tuesday Q&A ROI on 3 May 2016
Zelda Cunningham
Arthur Cox
Issues covered:

An employee on a fixed-term contract is entitled to full maternity leave. However, if her fixed-term contract ends before the last day of maternity leave, this counts as the last day of maternity leave. This means that if the fixed-term contract ends during maternity leave, then the employee’s contract of employment terminates on that date.

The fact that the employee is on maternity leave does not have any impact on the expiry of the fixed term contract. An employee’s entitlement to pay in respect of the maternity leave ceases from the date the contract expires. This does not affect the employee’s entitlement to the full 26 weeks of State Maternity Benefit.

Under the Protection of Employment

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Back to Q&A's This article is correct at 03/05/2016
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The information in this article is provided as part of Legal-Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article.

Zelda Cunningham
Arthur Cox

The main content of this article was provided by Zelda Cunningham. Contact telephone number is +353 1 618 0000 or email zelda.cunningham@arthurcox.com

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